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Phoenix666 writes:

A new study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex suggests people who speak two languages have more gray matter in the executive control region of the brain.

In past decades, much has changed about the understanding of bilingualism. Early on, bilingualism was thought to be a disadvantage because the presence of two vocabularies would lead to delayed language development in children. However, it has since been demonstrated that bilingual individuals perform better, compared with monolinguals, on tasks that require attention, inhibition and short-term memory, collectively termed "executive control."

This "bilingual advantage" is believed to come about because of bilinguals' long-term use and management of two spoken languages. But skepticism still remains about whether these advantages are present, as they are not observed in all studies. Even if the advantage is robust, the mechanism is still being debated.

I find learning more languages makes it easier to acquire new ones because you get better at it, but idiomatic speech and use of metaphor seem to take a real hit.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with a link to a comprehensive secure instant messaging communication guide at The Intercept. It covers Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Android, primarily using the Jabber/XMPP chat protocol and Tor Browser for configuring a Jabber account over the Web without accidentally leaking your identity.

When you pick up the phone and call someone, or send a text message, or write an email, or send a Facebook message, or chat using Google Hangouts, other people find out what you're saying, who you're talking to, and where you're located. Such private data might only be available to the service provider brokering your conversation, but it might also be visible to the telecom companies carrying your Internet packets, to spy and law enforcement agencies, and even to some nearby teenagers monitoring your Wi-Fi network with Wireshark.

But if you take careful steps to protect yourself, it's possible to communicate online in a way that's private, secret and anonymous. Today I'm going to explain in precise terms how to do that. I'll take techniques NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used when contacting me two and a half years ago and boil them down to the essentials. In a nutshell, I'll show you how to create anonymous real-time chat accounts and how to chat over those accounts using an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record Messaging, or OTR.

Phoenix666 writes:

Netflix has recently added Spanish-language shows on its service in the US. And the company says American subscribers are loving it.

"We've licensed a lot of programming from Latin America into the US, and are getting incredible viewing," Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in a call with shareholders today. "Shows that are successful for us in Mexico are now drawing huge numbers for us in the US."

Netflix has been able to reach a new demographic of users in the US, Sarandos says, by offering shows that originate in Latin America—and can assess what kinds of other content these users might find interesting. "We're getting hundreds of thousands of hours a day on single shows," Sarandos adds.

I started watching a Mexican program to keep up with my kids who are in dual-language kindergarten at school. Regrettably the plot advances at the snail's pace of all soap operas. Can any Soylentils recommend Spanish language shows on Netflix for our crowd?

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests the following story from PhysOrg:

Buildings at five of the poorest New York City Housing Authority complexes will start being wired for the high-speed connection this fall, officials told The Associated Press ahead of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio's public announcement, scheduled for Thursday.

The city will spend $10 million to deliver the Internet to residents of the Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx, the poorest area in the city; the Red Hook East and Red Hook West Houses in Brooklyn; and the Queensbridge North and Queensbridge South Houses in Queens. The Queensbridge Houses, the largest development in the nation, will be the first to receive the program.

City officials have said they want to change the perception that access to high-speed Internet is a luxury rather than a utility.

"Broadband is as important today as access to electricity and running water was at the end of the 19th century," said Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor. "It's about equity. Without Internet, you are at a disadvantage, whether it is doing your homework or accessing government services."

The city will pay a vendor, which has yet to be determined, to provide the Internet access for three years, at which point the program will be evaluated. Wiley said that more Housing Authority developments would soon become part of the program but there was not currently a timetable or enough funding to wire the whole system, which houses more than 400,000 people, about the population Miami.

De Blasio has said that through a variety of projects, including payphones being converted into wireless Internet transmitters, he wants all New Yorkers to have access to affordable broadband by 2025.

Phoenix666 and microtodd both write in with this story:

Knock me over with a feather. This is not how this kind of story almost always ends:

US airline United has rewarded two hackers who spotted security holes in its website with a million free flight miles each.

The flight provider operates a "bug bounty" scheme that rewards hackers for privately disclosing security flaws rather than sharing them online.

It has given the maximum reward of a million flight miles, worth dozens of trips, to two people.

One security expert said the scheme was a big step forward for online security.

"Schemes like this reward hackers for finding and disclosing problems in the right way. That makes the internet safer for all of us," said security consultant Dr Jessica Barker.

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from PhysOrg:

Sibling suns – made famous in the "Star Wars" scene where Luke Skywalker gazes toward a double sunset – and the planets around them may be more common than we've thought, and Cornell astronomers are presenting new ideas on how to find them.

Astronomers could discover a plethora of planets around binary star systems (stars that rotate around each other) by measuring with high precision how stars move around each other, looking for disturbances exerted by possible exoplanets. So explains new research, "Survival of Planets Around Shrinking Stellar Binaries," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences, July 9, by Diego J. Munoz, Cornell postdoctoral researcher, and Dong Lai, professor of astronomy, in the College of Arts and Sciences.

NASA's Kepler telescope is a heliocentric (it orbits the sun) spacecraft that monitors star brightness in a Milky Way region near the constellation Cygnus, the swan. Measuring photons, Kepler detects lower light values – and thus, a planetary transit.

Munoz explains that suns in the close binary system likely were once standard systems that have lost energy and shrunk, bringing the suns closer together. As the sibling sun's distance decreases, the orbits of that system's planets become misaligned, rendering it impossible for the Kepler telescope to detect planets – which no longer cross in the front of the suns.

Munoz and Lai suggest scouting for exoplanet-caused disturbances for compact binary star systems, to determine a new population of circumbinary planets. Said Munoz: "Since this type of 'compact' binary is very common, it had been very puzzling that no planets had been detected."

Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists are currently cultivating a marine plant that's packed with more nutrients than the trendy green superfood kale. And it naturally tastes like bacon.

Bacon-flavored crackers. Bacon-flavored salad dressing. These are just two of the savory treats that have been created so far using the domesticated strain of dulse (Palmaria palmata), a kind of red algae, or seaweed, that typically grows in the waters along northern Pacific and Atlantic coastlines.

I wonder if this will pass muster with my kosher- and halal-observing friends.

takyon writes:

Intel's "Tick-Tock" strategy of micro-architectural changes followed by die shrinks has officially stalled. Although Haswell and Broadwell chips have experienced delays, and Broadwell desktop chips have been overshadowed by Skylake, delays in introducing 10nm process node chips have resulted in Intel's famously optimistic roadmap missing its targets by about a whole year. 10nm Cannonlake chips were set to begin volume production in late 2016, but are now scheduled for the second half of 2017. In its place, a third generation of 14nm chips named "Kaby Lake" will be launched. It is unclear what improvements Kaby Lake will bring over Skylake.

Intel will not be relying on the long-delayed extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to make 10nm chips. The company's revenues for the last quarter were better than expected, despite the decline of the PC market. Intel's CEO revealed the stopgap 14nm generation at the Q2 2015 earnings call:

"The lithography is continuing to get more difficult as you try and scale and the number of multi-pattern steps you have to do is increasing," [Intel CEO Brian Krzanich] said, adding, "This is the longest period of time without a lithography node change."

[...] But Krzanich seemed confident that letting up on the gas, at least for now, is the right move – with the understanding that Intel will aim to get back onto its customary two-year cycle as soon as possible. "Our customers said, 'Look, we really want you to be predictable. That's as important as getting to that leading edge'," Krzanich said during Wednesday's earnings call. "We chose to actually just go ahead and insert – since nothing else had changed – insert this third wave [with Kaby Lake]. When we go from 10-nanometer to 7-nanometer, it will be another set of parameters that we'll reevaluate this."

Phoenix666 writes:

We often discuss the merit (or necessity) of having a formal degree in technology. This story is another installment in that debate:

The Department of the Interior's computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior's Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.

The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior's Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida's alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.

TFA emphasizes the falsification he did of his credentials, but there seems to be heavy insinuation that lack of degree = lack of ability.

Phoenix666 writes:

Over the past few years the world has watched as the Islamic State has destroyed historical monuments and committed acts of genocide in Iraq and Syria. While the group labels itself "Islamic," they've been destroying both Islamic and Christian holy sites along with sites that predate the founding of both religions, said archaeologist Clemens Reichel, a curator at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, in a presentation he gave last spring.

However, thanks to the Iraq travels of Amir Harrak, a professor at the University of Toronto, researchers have a chance to bring a bit of this destroyed heritage back online. Harrak is a native of Mosul (he left in 1977), a city that has been under the Islamic State's control for more than a year.

Between 1997 and 2014, Harrak made several trips to cultural heritage sites throughout Iraq, cleaning and recording engraved inscriptions that date between the seventh and 20th centuries. During a trip to Mosul in 2014, he recorded inscriptions and art at the monastery of Mar Behnam. Islamic State fighters captured the city and monastery in June 2014, but Harrak managed to leave before they arrived. Since then, the militant group has destroyed the monastery along with many sites in Mosul and other parts of Iraq. [See Photos of Iraq Heritage Sites Taken by Harrak]

Iraq's version of the Monuments Men.

Phoenix666 writes:

You would probably say the same if you were Eric Migicovsky, who runs smartwatch maker Pebble, whose business model involves selling people computers to wear on their bodies.

Even so, Migicovsky's confidence in the wider trend fuelling that business is notable, at a time when despite Apple and Google's moves into the smartwatch market, there is still widespread scepticism about what exactly these devices are for.
...
So, what are smartwatches for? Migicovsky compares the current state of the market with smartphones in 2007, in the early days of iPhone and Android.
...
For smartwatches in 2015, those core use cases appear to be activity-tracking and notifications – 90% of Pebble owners use notifications every day, according to Migicovsky – with watch-face customisation also scoring highly in Pebble's case.

On paper the case for something like Google Glass becoming indispensible seems stronger. Is Pebble right?

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from The Register:

The Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative has completed its first-pass survey of the Linux toolset, and is highlighting which tools are most at risk.

While there's lots of attention on high-profile packages like crypto tools, web servers and mail agents, there's also a lot of packages that everyone uses and nobody cares about (compression and image libraries figuring high on the list).

On its Github page, the foundation's Census Project has released the final version of a survey by David Wheeler and Samir Khakimov, Open Source Software Projects Needing Security Investments.

While Wheeler and Khakimov write that their work was constrained by time, and to this stage concentrated mainly (but not exclusively) on tools associated with Debian, it's still worrying.

The list of “most exposed packages” is drawn from a range of metrics – how much maintenance it actually receives, how popular it is, and how important it is (that is, can you live without it?). After their automated assessment of more than 350 projects, the pair then ran human eyeballs to identify what they believe to be the most exposed to security vulnerabilities.

While the list includes more than 20 utilities, some of which are highly exposed to Internet risks (mail transfer agents, DHCP, BIND tools and so on), the survey is measuring not the “level of bugginess” per se, but rather how much damage a bug would do, and therefore how much TLC a particular tool or project needs.

[...] The Census project at GitHub is here, and the full list of tools examined is in this CSV.

Phoenix666 writes:

UHF takes up the space between 400 and 700 megahertz on the wireless spectrum [Ed: Technically, it's defined as being from 300Mhz to 3Ghz]. [At these frequencies] its signals can carry for miles and more easily penetrate walls and trees than the higher frequencies used for most wireless routers. Despite this and the growing demand for wireless data, TV broadcasters continue to maintain preferential access to the UHF spectrum, even as the percentage of Americans relying on over-the-air signals for TV programming has begun to dip into the single digits in recent years.

The Federal Communications Commission allows for data to be transmitted over open UHF channels not claimed by a TV broadcaster, but urban areas where the need for more Wi-Fi options is greatest are also the least likely to have unclaimed UHF frequencies.

Knightly and Rice graduate student Xu Zhang designed a new solution to allow for transmitting wireless data over UHF channels during TV broadcasts over those same channels called WATCH (for "Wi-Fi in Active TV Channels") and were granted permission from the FCC to test it on the Rice campus last year. The basic idea behind the system is to actively monitor nearby TVs that are tuned into a local UHF video signal and to use advanced and efficient signal-canceling technology to send wireless data over the same channel without interference between the data and video transmissions.

Perhaps this is a candidate for open access to the Internet that this and other forums have been kicking around the past few years.

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from Phys.org:

Materials known as conjugated polymers have been seen as very promising candidates for electronics applications, including capacitors, photodiodes, sensors, organic light-emitting diodes, and thermoelectric devices. But they've faced one major obstacle: Nobody has been able to explain just how electrical conduction worked in these materials, or to predict how they would behave when used in such devices.

Now researchers at MIT and Brookhaven National Laboratory have explained how electrical charge carriers move in these compounds, potentially opening up further research on such applications. A paper presenting the new findings is being published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Phoenix666 writes:

Transport for London (TfL) has warned tube, train and bus passengers paying with Apple Pay on iPhones and Apple Watches not to let their batteries run flat or they could get stuck at gates and face penalty fares.

TfL advises users that, as with other smartphone payment systems including EE's Cash on Tap, Apple Pay only works if a device has power. It warns that, if the battery runs out in the middle of a journey, a user will not be able to tap out, which means they could be charged a maximum fare.

"If an inspector asks you to touch your iPhone or Apple Watch on their reader, it will not be able to be read and you could be liable for a penalty fare," TfL says.

Will scenes of addicts tethered to outlets with electricity IVs spread?